


an endlessly upward world

by kira_katrine



Category: The Hymn of Acxiom - Vienna Teng (Song)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24342298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira_katrine/pseuds/kira_katrine
Summary: The second world was meant to be exactly like the first, to include anything its human residents could possibly need or want. And yet somehow, Kate found it lacking.Lauren wanted to understand why.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4
Collections: Jukebox 2020





	an endlessly upward world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Solanaceae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solanaceae/gifts).



The second world, as it was now known, was made by Them.

They had one task: to create a world as close to the first world, the old world, as close to Earth as possible--Earth as it had been, before everything had gone so wrong.

They had all the tools and information They could need--all the digital data from the nearly one hundred years between the human invention of the Internet and the creation of the second world, and all that had been preserved from the millennia of human history before that. And so they had made mountains and beaches, clouds and stars, schools and office buildings and parks, apple trees and box turtles and leopard print fabric and donuts and paper clips.

The second world was not merely made by Them. The second world, in a sense, _was_ Them.

It all existed inside Their mind, Their memory. 

When the second world had first opened, there were just a few new residents at a time. Those first ones largely resided around the edges, examining the world, pointing out to Them anything that wasn’t quite right so it could be perfected.

Then, once the second world was finished, and stable, and ready, more started to come in. Slowly at first--then, suddenly, a flood of new residents, packing the streets, running and pointing and laughing and hugging and crying and falling in such imperfect ways.

When They saw it, They tried to fix it. Patching scrapes, mending broken glass with lines of code.

Somehow, it was not all as easy as that.

The residents were not truly part of Their world. They had lived in the first world, the organic world, for most of their lives. What existed in the second world were merely avatars that represented them. They were still connected to their flesh bodies, and in theory, when it was once again possible, they would one day return. Of Them, and apart.

Lauren, like the rest of Them, was a native of this digital world. This was her entire existence. It was not the same.

The default state of Them was watching everyone and everything at all times. They could see one resident entering the dairy aisle at the grocery store at the same time as another took notes in math class at the same time as a third burned the beans on the stove. They were perfectly capable of processing it all, of keeping everything running.

But at some times, more focus was desirable, and at those times They became Many. Lauren was one of the Many, taking the form of a human female, aged approximately twenty-five years, to walk among the residents inconspicuously. ‘Lauren’ was a code name she gave if asked.

And at this moment, she saw one resident sitting on a park bench, taking a bite out of a small baked food item--a chocolate chip cookie.

The resident was Kate Rudd, female, twenty-three years of age. She had baked the cookies herself; They had seen her do it. She had done it nine times since she had arrived in the second world. Lauren had analyzed the dates on which she did this, and found a correlation, though imperfect, with major news items regarding Earth. 

(These news items came out more frequently earlier on; now there were fewer left to write them. This was Kate’s first batch of cookies in one hundred and thirteen days.)

There was nothing particularly suspicious about this behavior. They had not split Lauren off to investigate it. There was no sign that the resident posed any threat to the second world, to any other resident, or to Them.

And yet Lauren found herself drawn to this resident, fascinated by her, she thought, not having been quite sure what that meant before. She watched Kate experiment with her own settings, changing the color of her fingernails from its default to a bright blue, then looking down at her hands and frowning. She had tried to decipher her as the voices of the Many buzzed within Lauren, reminding her of a much greater world they all had to attend to.

“Are you enjoying your snack?” Lauren asked Kate. It was a sunny day, with a temperature of seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit. There were also cloudy days in the second world, and rain and snow. They were arranged at a frequency intended to provide as close an experience as possible to the first world, and the public was informed of each day’s scheduled weather through their personal devices.

Kate looked up at Lauren. “Um, yeah. Yeah, I guess.”

“My name is Lauren. What is yours?” They knew residents often felt uncomfortable when They knew too much.

“Kate,” she said.

Kate sat back against the bench and stared off into the distance, chewing her cookie. Something was missing. Somehow, something was missing from Their data on her. Most of Them hardly seemed to notice. Perhaps human methods for obtaining information would--

“I made these, you know,” Kate said.

“Yes,” Lauren said. 

“Somehow they’re not like they were. They’re never like they were.”

That made sense, from what They had observed. “You are referring to how they were in your first world.”

“My--” Then it seemed to make sense. “You’re one of Them. That… that explains a lot, actually.”

“Indeed.”

Kate almost looked a bit disappointed. “You’re not… really real.”

“On the contrary, I am no more or less real than you are.” Lauren had heard this too many times from too many residents to even mind much anymore. “And perhaps that is the source of your problem.”

Kate blinked. “What?”

“The food you consume in this world is usually the same as what you are used to, correct?”

“The food I get from the restaurants tastes pretty close to what I’d get in restaurants back on Earth,” Kate said. “And the frozen stuff and the fruit and vegetables and stuff from the stores--or maybe I’ve just forgotten what it’s supposed to taste like. But when I make things at home, it’s somehow not the same.”

“You do not have taste buds in this world,” said Lauren.

“What do you mean?” She made an odd face, as if moving her tongue around inside her mouth to somehow test Lauren’s statement.

“You are not experiencing what you perceive in this world with your physical body,” Lauren said. “Everything here is made to be processed slightly differently than you would in your former life. Therefore, what appears to be the same recipe may not provide precisely the same result.”

“Oh,” Kate said, leaning back against the bench, her arm falling to her lap.

Lauren shifted slightly back towards Them, towards that web of data on the residents and their senses and their memories. They had long ago made all the calculations and conversions needed to translate food to the second world, and on that Lauren zoomed in. A small yellow disc popped into existence, hovering above Lauren’s right hand.

“Try this,” Lauren said, holding it out to her. 

Kate stared at the floating disc. “Is this what you guys… eat?”

“We do not,” said Lauren. “We do not require nutrition in the form of food--but the food you consume here does not provide your bodies with nutrition either. Yet there is clearly a reason you continue to do so in this world.”

“Yeah,” Kate said. “Yeah, I guess there is.” She took the disc from the air. “So do I put it in my mouth or--”

“If that is what would make you most comfortable.”

“...Okay.”

Kate laid the disc on her tongue, and an odd expression came over her face. At first it matched with _something pleasant_ , but then it became--

“How did you do that?”

“We are all around you. Your connections to this world are part of Us. We can read them and create to their specifications.”

“Our connection to this world is part of you,” Kate said. “Do you have any idea how weird that sounds?”

“Explain?”

“It’s different for you. You’ve always been… that,” Kate said, gesturing vaguely around her. “But we lost our world. You admit we’re not really part of this one--it’s yours, you just let us stay in it. We may never get our own back again.”

“You have Us now,” Lauren said. The Many hummed their approval. “We have made this world all you need.”

“You can’t,” Kate said. “No offense to you, but you just can’t. You can’t even imagine what this means to us, let alone fix it.”

Lauren tried to think of it. She was not sure she could. They were the second world. She could not be separated from it, as the residents could--

_\--could she?_

The displeased buzzing of the Many grew and grew louder; they knew what Lauren was going to say, as always, before she said it.

“You have me.”


End file.
